Tuesday, 23 August 2011

Motion is both elementary and fleeting; it is a fundamental precondition to our survival and our civilization. Motion is the functional basis to the discovery, measurement and exploration of the world that we live in. Elucidating and calculating motion are central issues within our culture, which is not only based on motion but designs it, being built upon a history of dynamics and acceleration.

The book presents Representatives of different disciplines—ranging from architecture to car design, from art-, cultural- and media-studies to sociology—discuss the depiction and design of motion in art, architecture, design, dance, and technology. This overview of historic developments and current trends discloses some surprising, border-crossing correlations.

An interesting chapter for example is on ergonomics and the history of making human motion to sync with the rhythm of machine production. Inge Baxmann is discussing the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor who used photography and video to dissect complex working processes in to micro movements and reassemble them to fit better with the machine cycles.

This is a very interesting perspective since motion, especially human motion is generally taken given and natural. We simply move the way we move because of some biological constraints. However as Baxmann argues there i a great deal of training and capitalist rationalisation. Of course this would then on a larger scale be similar as to the way we move in cities and urban areas. WHere we are trained to step in sync with he beat of the location.

Image by Andrew Davidhazy taken from people.rit.edu / Figure in Motion
Stroboscopic Photograph of a dancer in motion.

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About this blog

Cycle studies are the science of everyday life, as normal as it gets. Its focus is the daily routine, with its habits and rhythms as they occure in most citizens' lifes. It is the power of the normal that brings stability and the routine that ensures security. But is is the cycles's dynamic of flow and continuation that prevents life from freezing.

Cycles therefore stand for stability but are at the same time the engine of change.

With this blog the research on cycles and rhythms will be embedded in the most recent developments in technology, covering a range of areas with a focus on space-time related technologies.

The research is undertaken at CASA Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL.